An advanced tumor is a complex ecosystem. Though derived from a single cell, it evolves as it grows until it contains several subspecies of cells that vary dramatically in their genetic traits and behaviors. This cellular heterogeneity is what makes advanced tumors so difficult to treat. Publishing their findings in today's online issue of Cancer Cell, an international team of scientists led jointly by Professors Colin Goding from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research who is based at the University of Oxford and José Neptuno Rodriguez-López from the University of Murcia, Spain describe a therapeutic strategy that manipulates a mechanism driving that heterogeneity to treat advanced melanoma. Their preclinical studies show that the strategy, which employs a new drug-like molecule in combination with an existing chemotherapy, is highly specific to melanoma cells and effective against tumors that resist all other therapies.